HouseBot

Has anyone installed housebot on vista yet? I have just installed vista and am thinking about giving it a go. I love the sideshow part of vista. Can see a HUGE potential for housebot control with it. Anyone had a play with it yet?

I was going to install it, but I didn't want to be asked allow/deny every time I turned on my lights. Hope you all have a sense of humor.

And just to give closure to this topic, it has been tested under Vista and runs fine.

It works as long as you run it as Administrator. Without that it can't start up as it can't get r/w access to the database files since they are stored alongside the program executables. There should be something in the RTF file about this (or have the installer set the permission) as it'd give a bad impression to first time tryers on Vista.

This administrator problem isn't just with Vista. It applies to XP/2000 also. The problem is really the result of a bad design decision to save many of the program settings in a part of the system registry that is shared by all users. Unfortunately, only administrators can write to this part of the registry, so normal user accounts will not be able to even load HouseBot.

I agree that there really should be something in the readme... and ultimately it needs to be fixed.

ScottBot wrote:This administrator problem isn't just with Vista. It applies to XP/2000 also. The problem is really the result of a bad design decision to save many of the program settings in a part of the system registry that is shared by all users. Unfortunately, only administrators can write to this part of the registry, so normal user accounts will not be able to even load HouseBot.

I agree that there really should be something in the readme... and ultimately it needs to be fixed.

So where is the problem? Writing to the registry OR writing to the program location, ie Program Files\Housebot\etc?

For me, this problem only appeared after adding xAP, prior to that I could run HB with a normal user account.
So it would appeare that it is xAP related, perhaps in accessing the Ethernet? Causes the permissions issue?

Neil.

I'm guessing it's more than just writing to the program files/Housebot folder.

I had a similar issue with my webRemote plugin writing files to the HB folder, but it did not crash HB. It just would not write the log file. Adding the permissions to the user to write to the HB folder solved the issue. But it looks like the xap plugin needs more, because if it was just a file writing issue, it would have worked with my setup.... Since I added the perms for my user.

But thinking out loud and on my feet.... I suspect that generating log files from my plugin do not work properly on Win 7. I know they do on xp, as people have sent logs back to me. If file writes do not work properly on win7, I'd be in the same boat as the xap plugin. Except my plugin does not crash.... it just doesn't write the file. If I needed users to get log files, they would have to run as Administrator or adjust permissions.

ts

Wracking my brains trying to remember where the problem was. I'm pretty sure it's in the HouseBot code but it is the actions of the xAP plugin that cause it. I'll try reading through the source code to see if I can spot it. I don't like things that have to run as Adminstrator.